The Internet is Killing my Brain


I'm writing this short post simply because I need to write it, to write something, to use words in a creative way, because the internet is killing my brain.  I have recently noticed that my attention span has slipped below the threshold of a 4 year old's.  I can think of something to say or look up, turn my chair around or open a new browser tab, and find that in that split second my mind has gone blank.  Totally, irrecoverably blank.  Many times my brain feels fuzzy and dull inside my head.  I recall feeling this way occasionally when I was writing my thesis from info overload, or from working on the same thing too long, but it's never been accompanied by dementia-like memory loss.

I'm worried.

It seems clear to me that spending too much time on the internet is a bad thing.  I happen to have time, often, to hang out on the internet when I'm at work.  Even when it's for legitimate project-related research spending time reading things on the internet gives a different feeling than, say, looking at books from a library like I did in previous research endeavours.  Despite the fact that I like the non-tree-harming side of electronic information, there's something better for the brain about reading words on a piece of paper than on a screen all day. Maybe for me it's connected to the physical activity of underlining and making notes in margins.  I have no idea.  But this screen-time is killing me.  Slowly, silently.  It's killing my brain.

It's reached the point now where I find the internet to be largely boring.  Boring?  The internet has everything on it.  Want to know something?  Curious about a country or a person or current events or nature?  The internet has information that you can learn about all these things, and more.  But now I find it boring, and I open new tabs and stare at my most visited pages in Chrome (Windows work PC, ugh) and can't think of a single thing that I want to know about.  I'm over-saturated by internet material.

This calls for radical change.  I'm not sure what that means exactly, but change is needed, and change there shall be.  Mark my words!

Comments

  1. If you figure out what let us all know. THe internet is killing my brain too ( attention span, ability to remember shit) only it's my job 3 days out of 7 sooooo...

    *grouse*

    ReplyDelete
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